I would have loved to add to the conversation about ye olde catering problem, but stomaching this woman for one more moment was unthinkable. Besides, I had to zip on over to get Zeppo at the Pumpkin Patch to be at the Berkeley Y in time for his lesson before dashing into The Bowl for some edamame and sashimi-grade tuna on special and then back to B-C to get Zach before bringing Beansie to the vet (deep breath!).

I waved discreetly to Lisa Pizza and headed for the front door while keeping my eye on the woman with the caterer. Her skin was fabulous and her silky pageboy, a ginger spice brown, was cut to perfection. I nearly knocked over the cream-colored raincoat thrown regally across the chair next to her, but she took no notice. The label on the raincoat read Max Mara and I wondered what it must be like to schlep off to Weight Watchers on Gilman Street wearing a ten million dollar raincoat. It was a fact that I’d be wearing the same old Gore-Tex I’d had for twenty years when I reported for duty the following Tuesday.

I closed the door behind me as quietly as possible taking a good long look back at this foolish, rich woman who looked like she had an inner tube around her waist and whose mouth and hands kept flapping in unison. She sure was piss elegant, as Andy would say, kind of like a Sonya Sterling on steroids. It appeared to be my unlucky lot in life to find these women at every turn, even in wacky-doodles Berkeley where the People’s Movement appeared to be running out of steam.

“Every once in a while a woman comes into your life and you find yourself, therefore, truly able to begin to apply the appreciation that we all find is necessary to be the people and the human beings that we are meant, as we rise in our careers and our lives, to be,” John Thomas began, his eyes crinkly and uncharacteristically warm. 

“Not only for what we must achieve and strive to achieve and affect for ourselves and our careers, but also for how we want the institutions that we create and entrust to our capable hands, to soar to new heights.”  John Thomas paused to look for a sip of water. Sydney quickly poured a glass from a decanter resting on a breakfront behind her. “Thank you, Syd,” he mouthed before melodramatically taking a short sip. 

Mueskes then returned the glass to Sydney’s hand and looked to the crowd, whose faces were, by this time, hanging just a few centimeters lower than they had before Mueskes started spewing his word salad. The guy was Sarah Palin with a penis, I could have told any of them that.

Well, I kid you not, no sooner had I finished picking my lower jaw up off the floor, yet again, then Frances herself walked stoically through the foyer. She carried a box, shopping bag and her purse, having evidently just cleared out her desk after hitting  “SEND.” As she pushed open the front door of the admin building, Mueskes blasted out of his office and gave chase. His face was purplish red, a necktie practically strangling him, his left hand frantically clutching a piece of paper.

Melanie looked to me, and I to her. As if on cue, we bolted out of our chairs and into her husband’s office. Sydney flew out of her own and hissed, “Not without me you don’t!” The three of us landed in Mueskes’s large, floor-to-ceiling windows, each of us taking a bay, the best seats voyeurism could buy. Beyond the brick wall and the wrought iron gate, Frances threw her stuff onto the passenger seat of her car and walked around the back. John Thomas slammed his body against the door she had just closed and yelled something. She waved her hand, indicating she’d have none of it, and got into the car.

Mueskes moved around to the hood and held up his hands, the paper flapping in the wind, as if his stupid, fat ass wasn’t something she’d just love to run over. Frances put the car in reverse to back away from the lunatic headmaster, but he darted around, now pressing his girth and the piece of paper against her driver’s side window. But Frances flipped him off, looking down to shift before gunning forward in a fierce enough fashion. One might have thought Mueskes’s days were over. But alas he was left standing, staring at the back end of a battered Toyota Corolla.

The three of us pulled back from the windows, suddenly embarrassed by what we’d all witnessed. At least I was. Sydney said simply, “What the fuck was that all about?” 

On that debonair arm hung none other than Sonya Sterling who emerged from the lift dressed head to toe in a gorgeous burgundy suit. Even I could tell that it was the finest wool boucle with fur cuffs, dyed to match, at her wrists and collar. Her glorious hair swished around her cheekbones as if in slo-mo. Burgundy stockings hugged Sonya’s legs, which teetered seductively in a pair of burgundy suede boots with fur cuffs just like on the jacket. She was reed thin and stunning and she looked, for all the world, like a vial of blood.

As the boys got bigger, they shared bunk beds, toy chests, bookshelves and a fascinating symmetry in a cramped bedroom upstairs. Sometimes, they slept tightly wrapped around one another. But usually, I could tell which bunk was whose the previous night by the state of the comforter cover. Zach was as loud as he was small. He kicked the covers this way and that. He read his dreams aloud for all to hear. He stacked his books high and left toys out in a treacherous path. Zeppo, on the other hand, lived for order and neatness.  Soldiers were only good if they stayed in formation. Blocks needed to be stacked. Books wanted to be in the jackets. These boys were my yin and yang and in many ways, a manifestation of who I had once been and what I had become.

A second bedroom located under the eaves had become an office for me once Andy and I turned the downstairs den into the master bedroom. There was a desk with one of Andy’s hand-me-down computers, a small daybed where guests slept and a wicker rocker in which I had sung both boys to sleep. Barf stains were still visible on the coordinating fabrics. But it was a sweet room and I liked to call it “Control Central” because the most important things happened here, like paying the household bills.

The second factor in my increasingly mellow manner was the fact that it was going on late October and with Halloween careening toward us like a meteor, I had done nothing but ponder super hero capes, Green helmets and large swords.

For Zeppo, October was when the Pumpkin Patch preschool took on its true meaning. Each day, the teachers began lining the walkway to the school with tiny green and white gourds varying in size and color until by Halloween they lead the visitor to the top of the stairs. There, the largest and richest orange pumpkin money and fertilizer could buy held forth every year. By the end of the month, I was ready to puke orange. But the colors and the anticipation of a loud, noisy, scary holiday simply thrilled Zeppo. He never said as much, but his chest cavity swelled with excitement more than any other time of the year.

Zach, on the other hand, kept me occupied for much of the month. I listened to, responded to and then analyzed with him his choices for this year’s costume. He never chose to play to type, say, by choosing to be a munchkin from the Wizard of Oz. No, his choices ran to the taller side of things, which was fine for us as the parents who would ultimately either make or buy (my preference) the costume.

At precisely 8 o’clock, my VW Beetle was teetering on the side of the road, high atop the tallest peak in Berkeley. Carlos was right: this was nosebleed country, a five-bridge view, as the realtors-to-the-rich would say. Nearly the entire San Francisco Bay Area was visible from the end of the DeNutti’s driveway. Below lay a chimera of white house lights in the canyon and red brake lights on the ribbons of freeway, which meant if you blended the colors together, you would be correct in saying that everything up here was rosy.

If long driveways were a hallmark of wealth, then Dick and Deanna DeNutti had it in the bank. And in the Berkeley hills, where the ice froze and cracked human veins rather than pavement, a long driveway wasn’t so much a physical hazard as a geographical barrier, separating the middle class masses from the haves-way-too-much.